Homophobia, Sorority Rush Spike, and Accusations of Racism

The quick and dirty about what's been going on around the Ancient Eight (and some other schools too).

Harvard has Martin H. Peretz, but Stanford, it seems, has Victor Davis Hanson, who wrote a recent piece on academia’s alleged distance from reality. And when The Stanford Daily’s editorial board subsequently used this piece to accuse Hanson—a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution—of what it perceived to be racism, quite a kerfluffle erupted both on campus and in the blogosphere.

Hanson responded to the editorial on his blog, urging the Daily to “either apologize for the baseless slur of racism and the cheap language (e.g., ‘trash,’ ‘toxic,’ ‘despicable’), or at least show how I was in error, and that, in fact, there are logical and consistent criteria that qualify some groups for racial preference in admissions and hiring in the university and not others.” The Stanford Review provides the full story.

Administrators at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire have announced that they will respond to an e-mail sent by Systems Department Chair Tom Hilton, in which he encouraged a senior not to advertise the Eau Queer Film Festival. “I applaud reminders that people who identify themselves as gay or lesbian people, fellow humans who deserve affection and respect,” Hilton wrote in the e-mail, sent on Sept. 24. “However, I decry attempts to legitimize their addictions and compulsions.” In a statement, the University’s Chancellor said that the administration will address the issue, although it is yet unclear what the response will be.

At Yale, the Yale Daily News obtained a copy of the New Haven police department’s report on the raid of the Oct. 2 party at Elevate Lounge in downtown New Haven. Although the report provides a thorough account of the events that eventually led to the arrest of two Yale undergraduates (and the tasering of one), three students—all eyewitnesses—maintain the report still contains factual inaccuracies and misrepresents some of their peers as overly truculent.

Freshman and sophomore women at Princeton are rushing sororities at a 28 percent increase since last year, The Daily Princetonian reports. Even though Princeton continues to deny official recognition to Greek organizations on campus, 210 women have begun the rush process at one of three sororities.